Day 19 Banana barrel

The coring barrel had hit sea floor that was too hard to handle

The damaged corer is hoisted on to the deck to be dismantled

The damaged barrel segment went by the name of "Fred"

Saturday, 14th April 2012. The photos say it all - the coring team was out of luck today. It's sea floor: 1, gravity corer: nil.

Several metres into the sea bed the corer must have encountered a layer of gravel, rock or hard sediments and the force of the weight at the top turned the bottom segment of the coring barrel into the shape of a banana. But, this barrell segment was not just an anonymous piece of metal tubing. Each corer segment was given a name at the beginning of the cruise. Claire opted for very generic names, as to avoid confusion with real-life people. That was until somebody pointed out to her that there was actually a "Fred" on board. Erm, that would be me. But the name stuck and "Fred" did fine for a number of cores on the Falklands shelf and on the North Scotia Ridge. Until today, just 60 miles off South Georgia, it met its match. And now "Fred" is .... Ah well, I leave you to fill in the puns.

The TOPAS sub-bottom profiler had indicated that the sea floor would most likely be covered in sediments. The emphasis is on "likely". And in some cases it gets it wrong. Like today. That's science. You never know what you're gonna find until you go and look. That's what it's all about.